


Waiting for Her

by quantumoddity



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Death, Death as a character, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Post-Reynolds Pamphlet, it's quiet uptown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9572054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: And since then the garden had been the one place where Alex could stand and breathe, where everything moved so slowly that he could almost convince himself that the globe had stopped spinning, that he wouldn’t have to go another minute with this horrible gaping wound in his chest.A place where the world stopped had felt like a good place to meet Death head on.Alexander has always been able to see Death as he's run into her many, many times. But now he needs to talk to her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MinkyForShort](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MinkyForShort/gifts).



> This is based on MinkyForShort's excellent headcanon of Alex being able to see Death throughout his life as the woman who plays The Bullet, so credit for that idea definitely goes to her, she's done some sketches of it on her blog that you need to see cos they're so good.

Alexander knew she would be standing there before he turned to face her. She had been there for most of his life, watching him and hovering in the corner of his eye. He’d become familiar with the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, the sensation of bloodlessness in his fingertips that meant her pale eyes were on him. But this time, the ground falling away underneath him, the crackling of static in the air was welcome.

Alex had been waiting for her.

Moving slowly and carefully, like he was well aware of his own fragility and was frightened of just splintering himself into ragged shards, as he got up from where he sat on the edge of the porch.

Alex had been spending a lot of time in the garden since the day he’d felt his eldest son shudder and sob in pain in his arms, only to have him flicker out while Alex turned his back because the sight of it was too much for him. Once second, that was all, then he’d turned back, and some hospital machine was ringing out a single, dull note, his wife was screaming and his son’s face was ash and slack. Nothing left of him but the smell of blood and burning.

Alex had seen his son’s first breath, felt it with his own two hands as he’d caught him in a frantic rush, but he hadn’t been strong enough to watch his last.

He just hadn’t been able to do it.

And since then the garden had been the one place where Alex could stand and breathe, where everything moved so slowly that he could almost convince himself that the globe had stopped spinning, that he wouldn’t have to go another minute with this horrible gaping wound in his chest.

A place where the world stopped had felt like a good place to meet Death head on.

 

She always appeared the same to him, ever since he was a boy, a small and scared boy watching terrible things happen and not understanding why.

A woman, short black hair and teak skin, an air of abstraction and wandering, like she was never fully certain of what she was doing here, in a world where her own colours were saturated, her form blurred, compared to everything around her. That had always sickened Alex, the apparent aimlessness of death. What she did held no malice but it was…careless.

There was nothing to fight against there, no evil to face down against like Alex was used to doing, having a figure to yell and volley his words at, something to physically attack.

She had none of that, she simply was. She was unstoppable, as she moved through life unnoticed by everyone but him, in her strange old fashioned dress, like something out of a turn of the century painting, some relic of when the world was in flux. The colour of it was indistinguishable, the way she hazed and shimmered, but he could tell the hem of it was always dirty and ragged as if she’d walked many miles.

Alex only ever saw her from his periphery. Off in the distance, where he could almost convince himself that she was someone else, a trick, his mind’s knee jerk reaction. Or she’d be terrifyingly close, like she was right behind him, close enough to touch but never quite, that anticipation was the worst.

Not that Alex ever spent much time looking at her. He tried not to.

There had been no moment of realisation, not that he could remember at least, no one instance where he’d realised what she was and that no one but him could see her. He’d always known, like it was an instinct he’d been born with. And along with that came the unshakeable belief that he mustn’t ever tell anyone that he could see her. Of course not, they’d call him insane, they already had reason enough. Alex knew, from the sickness he got when he saw her travel her path, from the tension in his gut when he felt her close by that seeing her was some kind of mistake. A punishment maybe. A glitch in the system, something corrupted and wrong about where he stood in reality that let him see her.

That let him see Death.

Alex knew that’s what she was, for a dark certainty, he’d always know it. She always became visible to him when someone lost their life, though which came first he didn’t know. Whether she was an omen or a tax collector. To be honest, he didn’t want to know

Alex had first seen it with his own eyes when he was only seven. He’d been walking back from school, his back groaning under the weight of all the books in his arms (the school librarian let him take home extra, she’d gotten to like him. They’d take care of the lonely hours until mama got home from work). He hadn’t seen the crash itself, he’d been focusing on the hair falling in eyes and the sweat running down his spine, but he heard the yells and the car horns and the screeching tyres. As he’d spun, his dark, scared eyes found the man lying prone in the middle of the street with his motorbike a twisted wreck close by, though his body was strangely unmarred. Peaceful almost, like he was in repose.

But standing above the man was her, looking almost disinterested, was her. Alex watched, feeling that he might be sick, that he was witnessing something secret and wrong, as she bent and just…pulled something out of the man. Something that looked like nothing more than a bending of the light, a shimmer in the air but it shook Alex to his core to see it. He’d looked away instantly; he hadn’t been able to bear it.

And when he looked back she was gone and there were sirens and flashing lights but little Alex had known in his heart that there was nothing they could do.

She’d taken the man with her. Where, Alex never wanted to know.

He’d ran home as fast as his legs could carry him, tears running down his face, shaken to the foundations of his self, never, ever, ever wanting to see that woman again.

But even as he’d sprinted for home, leaving the screams and honking car horns far behind him, Alex could feel her terrifyingly pale eyes on him.

Of course Alex saw her again. More times than he ever wanted to.

As he’d lain in that narrow hospital bed, clinging to his mother’s rapidly cooling body and hearing and seeing something other than what was in front of his glazed, feverish eyes, he’d seen her. She’d been standing over the bed, no pity or remorse in her eyes as she’d held something in her hands. He hadn’t been able to see it, Alex had been too close to the edge to lift his head, but in his head he’d been running, sprinting but getting nowhere while voiced screamed in his ears and fire burned in his chest.

When he’d woken up to find his mother…gone. Then he’d realised what she’d been holding in her hands. His last shred of love and support and she’d ripped it from him.

He saw her in the sky as the hurricane had done its damndest to rip him from the earth’s surface, as he’d crouched as best he could on the roof of the store, he’d had no time to get anywhere else. As the waters had risen and the rain had howled and Alex had howled with it, digging his fingernails into his palms so hard they bled, he’d seen her, flickering from off in the clouds to inches in front of his face. And in that deathly silent moment, when the sky had turned a thick, stunning yellow as the eye had passed over what was left of his town, his home, Alex had felt her right behind him. Waiting. Almost like she was…challenging him.

And so Alex had thought, fuck it. Fuck this, fuck dying here in the storm. He was going to live.

And he did, he managed to make it through somehow, his soul hardened and scarred but he’d found a determination to stay alive out of sheer spite.

Alexander Hamilton was going to live and he was going to make the whole goddamn world sit up and take notice.

People would always joke that Alex lived like he was dying, note his penchant for obsessing over the futility of life, the uncertainty of the future. His friends would roll their eyes and joke that he was hardly going to be struck by lightning on the way to work tomorrow, he could maybe afford to relax a little? Alex would take the gentle teasing with shrugs and crooked smiles but below the surface he was cold.

Because of course he was afraid of dying, how could he not be when he could feel her pale eyes on him all the time, when he felt hunted by her, when he had to lie awake at night and wonder how many near misses he had left? How could he not fear Death when his whole life had been about hiding from her, waiting for the day she would take him?

But, in the end Death hadn’t taken him. She’d done something much worse.

So Alex wasn’t hiding from Death anymore.

He was waiting for her.

 

She was standing in front of him, the afternoon sunlight slanting through her, bent slightly by her washed out form.

For the first time in his life, Alex made himself look at her, really look. Her hair was short, tight curls all swept upwards, her face a little thin and drawn, her expression set and distant, her frame sinewy. And still in that colourless dress that looked as if it was from a museum, yet it was worn from travel. She looked as if she didn’t belong to any one time period, like she was outside of it all, unstuck and cobbled together from different scraps and loose parts.

All his life Alex had feared her. But he faced her today with nothing but grief in his amber eyes.

“Take me,” Alex’s voice cracked and splintered, his throat was constantly raw and his eyes constantly streaming these days, “Take me and bring him back.”

He’s spent his whole life arguing, he’d made himself a career out of pulling long and complex and irrefutable reams of opinion from thing air, of twisting people’s opinions to his and convincing them that only he held the truth out of everyone else in the room. It was what he was good at, floods of words and barrages of logic, turning words into weapons.

He knew that was going to get him nowhere. So he could only beg.

“You can have me instead, okay?” he forced himself to look right into those translucent, blank eyes, “You can have my soul, you can have my life, you just need to bring Philip back.”

No response. Nothing. Her hair and dress moved slightly in a breeze that wasn’t there in that warm, sun bathed garden.

Alex’s took a step forward, stumbling a little on exhausted legs, his voice growing wheezy and frantic, “I know you took him. But I need him back. Look, I’m offering you a fair trade aren’t I, my life for my son’s? I know you can hear me, god damnit it, answer me! Come on. I… _please.”_

The plea escaped his lips before Alex could stop it, a dry, gasping plea. But still no expression flickered across her face. She didn’t raise her hand to take anything from him, though it wasn’t like she wasn’t hearing him.

Did she just not care?

Alex hadn’t seen her take his son with his own eyes. He’d been turned away from the hospital bed, unable to watch how Philip’s chest heaved and his sweet face twisted in pain and fear, as his voice, reciting his old childhood song along with his wife’s frantic rasp, it faded to a pained choking noise. And then silence.

The next noise in the acrid smelling room had been his wife screaming. Then a sickening crunch and snap as Alex’s fist connected with the wall and plaster and bone gave way.

And in amongst it, she took his Philip. His sunshine, his first-born, gone like he’d meant nothing, like his absence hadn’t destroyed his parent’s lives.

Alex gave a shuddering gasp, now breaking completely as part of his brain drifted back to that hospital room, that night, “Come on, please, I know you’ve been watching me for years, I know you’ve been waiting for this, well now you can fucking have me, I just need him back. Please…please, I-I’m begging you. He was just a boy for fuck’s sake, he was a child, it’s not fair! I’m the one who fucked up, I’m the one who deserves to die, he…he did nothing wrong…he n-n-never hurt anyone…I just want my boy back…”

Alex didn’t realise he was sobbing until the words wouldn’t come out any more, until his breaths turned to hitching moans, until the grass suddenly rushed up to meet him and he was on his hands and knees.

_Be smart. Make me proud son._

That’s what he’d said. He’d just been so happy Pip was talking to him again, that he actually wanted his dad’s advice after so long being furious at him and refusing to even be in that same room. And it hadn’t sounded so bad, just some trouble with another boy had school, Alex hadn’t thought to press any further. He’d never imagined…

It was his fault. He’d killed his son.

Alex’s hands came to pull at his own hair, rocking where he kneeled and strangled sobs tore from his body, his grief and rage and guilt and everything else he felt spilling out of him, tearing him open from the inside out.

And all she did was stare at him, watching.

“Take me,” Alex begged, an inch from incoherence, his voice a scream, “Take me, just fucking take me, please, I can’t do this anymore, _I can’t do it.”_

His streaming eyes snapped up to her face, yanked up by some instinct. That face he’d been seeing since he was a small boy, in his dreams and as his loved ones were ripped away from him again and again, more than could ever possibly be fair. But with taking his eldest son, the boy who’d finally proved to Alex that life was worth living and that he mustn’t be that bad of a person, not if he could make someone so good and kind and with such a bright smile. That and, what’s worse, leaving Alex to live in this world without his son, she’d broken him.

Alex didn’t know if it was just the tears in his eyes but as she disappeared, as the sun shifted further into the horizon and she was suddenly just gone, he could swear that those lifeless eyes had flooded with pity.

 

Alex wasn’t quite sure how he ended up back on his office couch that night, the way he’d felt, he wasn’t sure he was ever going to move again. But it passed, just like it always seemed to, even when he’d felt like there was no coming back. Something always dragged him back.

So that was where Eliza found him, curled up in a tight little ball, shivering in his sleep, looking so small and so scared in the middle of his dark office.

Alex had thought he’d been alone in the house but he’d been wrong. Eliza had heard him, desperate pleas, his broken cries. She’d ran out into the kitchen to see him on his hands and knees, she’d been so close to going out and comforting him.

Eliza still had those, those moments when she could forget everything that had happened, the rift that had somehow opened up between her and the man she loved. But they never lasted longer than a heartbeat, before reality hit her hard and froze her in her tracks.

So she could only stand there, her hand clasped to her mouth as she’d listened to Alex talk to…to who? Begging and pleading for…oh. For the very thing Eliza found herself waking up in the middle of the night, sobbing for.

Part of Eliza had wanted to turn and run. Part of her had wanted to fall to her knees and fling her arms around him. Every single part of her just wanted this to end.

Because how much longer could they possibly take?

She’d been on her way to another sleepless night of trying to remember as many of their son’s idiosyncrasies, his little quirks and habits, everything that made him her baby boy. As much as each one was like a fresh wound, the idea that she might some day forget the way Pip wrinkled his nose as a way of greeting people or the way he was always tucking that one curl behind his ear, that scared her more than words could say.

But Eliza caught sight of Alex as she’d passed his office, him sleeping fitfully, his expression tense and sorrowful, he hadn’t even changed out of his clothes. He’d been wearing them for three days straight now.

And she just hadn’t been able to keep walking. Because whatever he’d done to her, whatever had happened, he was Alex and listening to him beg for…something to take him and trade his life for their lost son’s had broken her.

Before she really knew what she was doing, Eliza was stepping to Alex’s side, picking the blanket up from the floor and sweeping it over him. And her fingers were brushing the hair back from his damp forehead, lingering there just a little.

Eliza caught herself quickly, turning and nearly fleeing from the room.

But not without a last glance.

Because whatever had happened, he was still her Alexander. And Eliza was not losing any more of her family.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr, quantum-oddity


End file.
